Texans encounter Bears defense focused on turnovers

The Bears' defense accounts for a good portion of Chicago's scoring. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

Author Nelson Algren once compared Chicago to a woman with a broken nose. This is a city with grit and toughness, where part of its beauty comes from ugliness. That makes it a poetic place for a defensive-driven football team to thrive – defense is ugly, until it wins games by itself.

That’s what the Chicago Bears have this year.

It’s a team with a history of dominant defenses and some of the best defensive players in the league. And even with the tradition of Bears defenses past, this one stands out.

“This is the best talent-wise, for sure,” Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher said. “Anytime you’ve got a guy like (DE) Julius Peppers. (WLB) Lance (Briggs) is playing great. Peanut (CB Charles Tillman) is playing great. (CB) Tim (Jennings), (SS) Major (Wright), all these guys, (DT) Henry (Melton), I can go on and on, but all these guys are playing great this year. Just the explosiveness that we have on this defense, I’ve never been around anything like it. It’s fun to be a part of it.”

The Bears defense isn’t just dominant, it’s exciting. Chicago’s defense and special teams have accounted for eight touchdowns in the Bears’ first eight games. Conversely, they have allowed just nine touchdowns to opponents.

It’s helped the bears to a 7-1 record, second best in the NFC to the Atlanta Falcons.

The Bears are the best in the NFL at takeaways, have caused an astounding 21 fumble and recovered 11. They’ve notched 17 interceptions, too. That’s an average of 3.5 turnovers per game. Sunday night they’ll face a 7-1 Texans team that protects the ball better than anyone in the league.

“We’ve been good at protecting it but they’re the best at getting it out,” Texans coach Gary Kubiak said. “We pay attention to it all the time. We better pay special attention to it this week. I think they’ve gotten two turnovers at least in each game so that’s unheard of.”

While turnovers can seem like a flukey way for a team to win, it’s by design for the Bears, led by a pair of cornerbacks. Cornerback Tim Jennings leads the Bears with six interceptions, one returned for a touchdown, and Charles Tillman leads the Bears with seven forced fumbles (he also has two interceptions, both of which he returned for touchdowns.) Linebacker Lance Briggs has two interceptions returned for touchdowns, Urlacher has one and Wright returned one of his three for a touchdown.

“Once you see what takeaways can do to help your ball club and then you see guys doing it, you want to be a part of that,” Bears coach Lovie Smith said. “Now it’s just a base part of a culture around here. It’s expected.”

It starts with practice, when they spend hours every week practicing just that.

“If the running back runs past us and we don’t strip, we get yelled at,” Urlacher said. “If the ball is on the ground and we don’t pick it up or if it’s an incomplete pass or a fumble, it just doesn’t happen. You have to pick it up and run with it. Picks, we score every time in practice. That’s just our culture around here. That’s what we’re taught; it’s what we do and what we do in games.”

Turnovers can change games more than a sure tackle, though that’s important, too. Turnovers can shift momentum and deflate an opponent.

Conventional wisdom might say too much of a focus on creating turnovers is a high-risk, high-reward plan, like when a defensive back gives up a big play when going for an interception rather than a tackle. But the Bears don’t see it as much of a risk at all.

“It’s about trying to get the ball back and you can’t play prevent with all these players worried about missing a tackle or something like that,” Smith said. “Without going into detail, we’re just not coming up there punching the football. There is a time to punch the ball, but we’re trying to secure [the tackle]. You can do both. We haven’t missed a lot of tackles. We’re an excellent tackling football team, but you can do both.”

It would get ugly, if it wasn’t so well-executed. The beauty of the Bears is in their defense.